


Sleep like death

by TheWoodburn



Series: Of Feathers and Ash [2]
Category: Batman - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 13:35:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9443120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWoodburn/pseuds/TheWoodburn
Summary: I will raise you to be a Lord of all things, raise you above your own kind. But first she must gather herself and change what she is. Change where he is.





	

Sometimes she sleeps, and sometimes she does not sleep. Time is irrelevant. She doesn't really sleep – just goes off into her own paths inside her head. More so than usual. She is not part of this world, and that's the problem.

She walks through cities without a name and she does not know any of the words or names. It feels lonely.

There's nothing keeping her anchored to this world.

But there will be. Soon. The Lady just hopes that she will still be here when that time -

When all the threads start to come together and tangle -

Inevitably, comes again.

—

There are nights of dreams, dreams about sliding through alley ways and trickling over uneven, poorly paved streets. She dreams about opening doors and finding hiding places for a little boy.

The Lady dreams about a little boy who has nightmares and she – she doesn't want that.

She doesn't like it when children are hurt. It's a bad thing, isn't it? When children hurt are hurting? Deep, deep down into the waking slumber she lays in everything is murky. Confused. Reality – this reality – is something that she can never be certain of.

She feels her fingers sliding over brick and concrete as she opens doors and points out alley ways and finds strange boy-sized crevices.

—

She doesn't have these dreams all the time. But a lot of the time, she feels – she feels like she's not understanding something. She doesn't like that, not understanding.

It feels like she's not all here, that some part of her is elsewhere, doing something else. She feels a sense of urgency that makes her want to fidget, even though her body lies without breath.She feels like she has to be elsewhere, doing something else. Something that isn't being still.

Sometimes she is scared that drunk on time the girl will fall into a dream from which there is no return.

—

There are some people she thinks can see her. Hear her. Touch her. They look at her with strange eyes. As if they aren't looking at a person at all.

Is she a person?

What is she, if not a person?

There is one boy who she approaches. He does not speak to her. But he moves with her. She guides his hands and his feet.

It is nice when he is there. He tries to look at her and doesn't look away. She feels real when he is there, because he makes her real.

Sometimes he points at the things and it is nice. They are pretty things.

—

She can feel him slipping away from her. Or maybe she's slipping away from him.

In the end, the schematics aren't really that important.

She doesn't know if this is dying – it probably should be. The pain says, it should be, at least. She doesn't know how long she's been here, bleeding and not.

Is this where someone says don't go into the light?

I'm sorry, The Lady thinks in his general direction. I'm so, so sorry.

She wonders if he'll cry. She hopes he does. He hasn't – he hasn't cried in a long time.

Not for his friends, not for his mother – maybe he'll cry for him and he'll cry for them, while he's at -

She swears, time seems to slow down a little, as she closes her minds eyes and sees – thinks she sees – Robin, bleeding on the floor and feels heat on her back.

It's instinct to reach, to throw herself over Robin, put himself between him and whatever-is-burning-hot-oh-god-it-hurts behind her.

The Lady almost thinks he smiles a little.

She doesn't know for sure.

But his skin is warm and she can feel it. The polarities of their energy. Herz sucking his in, and his burning against hers. She can feel how he's slipped to her. Is still, slipping into her. She knows that in other worlds – in the worlds she has seen when she walked the forbidden roads – things are different. That this isn't her problem.

Her powers do not lie in this world and this world only. What she is is not of this world or of any world on any path. There was a cost—there had to be a cost to such power. She had been born knowing the weight of her crown, her magic. Had felt its isolation long before she’d reached adolescence. Nameless is it's price.

She opens her eyes and there's only one thing going through her head, in that dark-shape-fog-place -

He's dead.

She feels something in her shatter. Something in her shatters and splinters, rises up and snarls, bursts apart, and slams together.

He is -

—

She feels the surge of power inside her – that power that isn't quite magic, but at the same time isn't normal, either. When the first living this existed it was there waiting. When life fades at last, it will longer exist, and by extension, neither will she. Her power.

Volatile and capricious, but always, always deadly.

He will go far, someday. But his paths, his several opportunities, shouldn't be cut off into the dark one that those she walks just because of that man. A self appointed Cerberus of a city.

The boy is going to ruin himself for him.

He can't go back – not yet. Her power, her newly awakened self – hasn't settled yet. It has yet to sink into her bones and blossom in her veins and spark behind her eyes. She know – knew – this.

She's walked into the path between worlds – seen how every world is connected and different, how every person is connected and different. Walked until she found him. Sometimes she thinks that he's slipped into somewhere else – someone else – by accident. She can never be too sure. The dead and the unborn lay like fragile things, haunting the air, floating there, within the same dark place.

In the world of magic and power, there is no such thing as given. There is taken and stolen and claimed. The Lady knows that more than anything.

He is cradled gently, this is everything he has ever been, and ever will be. It is him as he is now, and then, and tomorrow. It is all him and he is all of them. Time – The Lady understands – is a human concept. He looks like something lost, now. He is and is not of this world and she knows that most of that is her fault. Too much dark magic, too much emptiness. It's not good for their psyches.

When he left this world he left part of him with her and she doesn't know if he'll ever replace that part.

—

The Lady wishes that he could love her the way she deserves, like a proper human being. But she isn't human and he deserves more than what sh has. The remnants of herself – her hollowed out and world-weary self. I'll always be there. For you. I won't give up on you. I will raise you to be a Lord of all things, raise you above your own kind. But first she must gather herself and change what she is. Change where he is.

She knows, of course, the instant he returns to his world, guided by her whispers. She is the wind that drove another boy to the brink of madness, the place where he is her unknowing agent when he creates a crack for her to slip that precious burden she has been protecting. And it is the beginning of him, parts of her leading him. She feels it form, the power sink into Gotham's spirit and anchor itself there.

They are both the same creature, bound by experience and the darkness that guides them. As such he must work through the means if his resurrection and the new child who wears his skin. They must wait to meet until then.

 

—

She feels the life flowing through every plant, person, animal, insect, bacteria.

It's overwhelming.

She can feel – hear, taste – their blood, their internal organs, the magic and life that flows through them. Enters and leaves with every breath.

And she can feel it, touch it.

The Lady knows that if she reached out she could use it, control it.

That knowledge is part of her, something innate.

Time, The Lady has learned, is fluid. There is no such thing as fate or destiny. It is all chance.

So she whispers to herself as she rises to the surface. I will try to make it clear, that I do love him. That while it is hard for me to express it, that I am attempting to make an effort. I would make it clear that because of my experiences and my mistakes, I am emotionally unable to feel at the same level as a normal human being. But despite that, I am still making the effort for him.

She is the only one. And she always will be, and then there will be another like her, someday. Another like her who is also, alone.

But for the moment, the moment of this mortals life span, she is not alone.

And so she rises, a behemoth from the deep.

—

  
Kira wakes up, so cold and there's something burning sliding through her skin. She claws at the skin of her chest, can barely breathe with it -

It's overwhelming and painful and foreign but familiar all the same.

It feels like all her nerves are re-connecting – raw and painful.

—

The first time he returns to Gotham, he feels it. The cold so strong it knocks the wind out of his breath, and he feels something settle in his chest, even as he remembers how to breathe around it.

Even though he was thrown through fire and rage, this body still remembers it.

The cold.

There are no shadows, but that night things go remarkably well and he sleeps a dreamless sleep.

The cold fades, but he thinks that maybe, just maybe, his shadow is still out there somewhere.  
—

"Jesus Christ.” She looks up to the heavens, seeking divine intervention. “This is torture.”

  
“This? No. This is a conversation between…friends.”

  
“We aren’t friends.”

  
“You’re right.” He shakes his head. “We’re so much more, snookums. Our connection…it’s deeper than words.”

  
“I loathe you.”

  
“You love me.”

  
"I would rip out your heart and feed it to your dying corpse if only it wouldn't inconvenience me more than this conversation already is."

  
“Rude.” He replies, hand to his heart, “I’m just doing my duty and taking care of the family business while the old man is away.” He says this, as if he – for the better part of the last decade – wasn’t out on a one-man war against everything Bat and Rogue in Gotham.

A wave of spite hits her so hard she feels like she goes cross-eyed for a second.

“Get out.”  
—

“I don’t care how you label yourself — friend, girlfriend, strange girl who follows me around…”

  
He laughed when she raised an obsidian eyebrow.

  
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m crazy about you."

  
"More like crazy around me." She mutters as she attempts to massage away a headache she wholeheartedly attributes to his presence.

—

“I already know that you're not human. But I also know that you won't hurt me." He has grown, become a man while she awoke.

"All things hurt each other.”

“Not that you would hurt me. Could." The truth. But all truth is a little bit of a lie.

"I could."

"No. You couldn't." His mouth curves up. "You won't hurt me, Kira. You're too busy hurting yourself to hurt me.” His arrogance makes her want to punch him, the first human emotion for a long time.

"Love is my most elaborate method of self harm."

He almost looks amused for a moment. "Then why do you love?"

Why does she love indeed.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I really liked the idea of someone bringing Jason back, not just a universal glitch. And it just fit with where I'm going with Kira and Jason's relationship.
> 
> I have to mention that in this they are not together, and the ’love' Kira talks about is more like finding a kindred soul, more like friendship. 
> 
> Anyway, read and review please! I would like to know how I'm doing;)


End file.
